Saturday, July 27, 2013

Hometown Water

Here is
something from a story I am working on that may be of interest to readers of
this column. In the middle of the 19th Century, three young
bachelors of Washington, Arkansas breakfasted sumptuously together every Sunday
before church. They were the twins, store-owners Tom and Lum Williams, age 30
and Dr. Elias Hart, age 27, who had recently established his four-room clinic
next to Williams store. Lum served up plump corn cakes and salt pork from the
potbelly stove situated in the middle of the hardware section. On this windy
and rainy Easter morning, the heat from the stove was most welcome.

“Y’all planning
on church this morning?” Tom asked and then went on before the others could
answer, “I don’t think I’m going to make it in this storm. I would like to stay
warm and dry this morning. Besides, The Reverend is preaching a series on the
Second Coming and I find it very speculative. There is nothing definite in
those sermons. I need edification this morning, not speculation.”

“But brother,”
Lum jokingly put in, “You don’t want to waste that rare bath you took last
night. I know you put on clean clothes, too, all the way down, for I saw you.”

Tom grinned good-naturedly
and replied, “I’ll just have a sanitary Sabbath here at the store on my own,
thank you. I have been pondering a passage of scripture I need to spend some
prayerful time seeking the Lord’s counsel on.” The brothers shared a two-room
apartment in the back of the store, while Elias made his home next door at the
clinic. Many people in town felt that Tom had missed a call to the pulpit, but
he believed everyone, not just preachers, should be interested in understanding
scripture.

Dr. Hart took a
sip of coffee and found it satisfactory before he said, “Tom, are you still
worried about that Bethlehem water episode from II Samuel 23?”

“No, not
worried, Doc. I am more concerned than worried. I do not understand it is all.
Why did King David consider the water from his own home town of Bethlehem,
water that he requested, as poison to be poured out on the ground?”

Lum chewed on a
piece of dry salt meat as he said ponderously, “Brother, listen. The scripture
is very clear. There is nothing puzzling there. David, having been in an
exhausting fight, longed for water from his own city. Isn’t that how we feel
about the taste of Washington water when we go to Fulton for supplies? That
water down there tastes sulfuric, as if it bubbles up from Hades itself. All
David wanted was water that tasted right, like our water tastes to us.”

“Why did he pour
it out, then?”

“Because those
mighty men had risked their very lives to fetch it. He honored them by pouring
it out,” Lum explained.

“He should have
drunk it. We eat and drink the Lord’s Supper, don’t we?”

“That is a very
good point, brother,” said Lum, “but I find no typology in the passage.” And so
the story goes.